House MD: review/meta "Revelations"
Via the House/Wilson community on LJ, I discovered and read a really good story, and it bothered me a lot.

(Author's name: Alternatealto. It is important to note that the story would not have bothered me nearly so much if it had not been such a good story.)

The basic plot of the story is (it's one in a sequence of stories about top!Wilson and bottom!House) - House just lost one of his patients. She died even though House had identified the disease and found the treatment, because Cuddy wouldn't agree to it: and the story opens with House angry, anguished, and ready to rumble, because: Cuddy wouldn't okay the treatment: the patient died: the patient had children who had been abused by their dad: the children (as dad is in jail) are now going to end up in foster care. House is, justly, really pissed off.

In the middle of a furious row in Cuddy's office, Wilson tries to get House to leave by saying, with "a bit more authority into his tone and gripping House’s biceps tightly" Come with me. Now.

And House turns round and snaps “We’re not at home. We’re not in bed. There are no cuffs here. You don’t get to give me orders.”

Present to hear House say this: Cuddy and the Head of Nursing. (Both or either of whom are clearly really bigmouthed, as by the next day, everybody knows.) [Update: author pointed out to me that I'd missed that she intentionally omitted either House or Wilson remembering to close the door of Cuddy's office so that "the other man turned and walked blindly out the still-open door" - which is another point against Wilson: part of his responsibility as House's friend was, in fact, to be the one who remembered to close the door, since House (unusually) didn't.]

Wilson then disappears. For two days.

House is left with "The condo was empty when he got home. It was empty when he got out of the bed he’d spent the night not sleeping in. He didn’t have a case. He worked the clinic.He didn’t have Wilson. He thought he might lose his mind."

(There is also a really embarrassing scene in which Chase outs himself as a Top, and identifies House as a bottom, and frankly... Chase would bottom to House if House frowned at him. The important part about this scene, however, is that it establishes that everybody now knows about House and Wilson, because House outed Wilson.)

And yes, House did. But he outed himself at the same time.

You can say that under most circumstances (I'll make an exception for closety and homophobic gay legislators) outing people about their sexual predilections is always wrong.

But the circumstances? The writer set up a situation where Wilson was covertly using their relationship as top/bottom in a professional situation where House was justly upset, not to support House, but to get House out of Cuddy's office. And when House rejected that bit of covert manipulation, he outed Wilson as his top and himself as Wilson's bottom.

Wilson had a right to be angry that he'd been outed. But House had a right to be angry that Wilson had tried to use their relationship professionally. Wilson didn't have a right to make use of their relationship in public, and expect House to remain silent about it. I was thinking about the recent (on British cable recent) 6th-season episode where House outs Wilson about something Wilson wants to remain private, and House really has no goddam excuse: it was pure meanness on House's part. (But notably, Wilson gets that while he's looking for something that would embarrass House just as much as House embarrassed him, the real indepth revelation he could make to Chase and via Chase to the hospital, that House's biological father is a Unitarian minister and wrote a book of sermons that House has been studying - that's a level of hurt that is not commensurate with the teenage-Wilson in an embarrassing movie.)

Having disappeared for two days to tend to his own emotional needs and ignore House's, Wilson returns to a needy and apologetic House. (Wilson does not apologise for his part in the scene in Cuddy's office: neither for trying to use his authority as a top to manipulate House in a professional setting, nor for not being there to support House - for not being on House's side when House was so anguished and angry and brutally upset at losing a patient he's sure he could have saved. Wilson does not apologise at all.)

(And really, Wilson had no business being there in Cuddy's office at that moment unless he was going to be there for House - if he couldn't do that, he should have stayed away.)

What House did was wrong - it overstepped the boundaries of what either of them had been prepared to be open about in the hospital, and he should apologise for it. And he does. But where's Wilson's acknowledgement that he let House down at a moment when House really needed him, and he should apologise for that? [Or Wilson's acknowledgement that the reason House's reaction to Wilson's attempt to Top him in public really was a public disaster, was because Wilson forgot to close the door behind him when he entered Cuddy's office?]

Nowhere.

The sequence of stories that AlternateAlto's written (this top to bottom tag should work) present Wilson, in his own estimation and House's, as a really good top - caring, responsible, understanding of House's limits, understanding of House's needs and his own.

But this story puts a whole different face on it: because it's awfully onesided. It leaves a very bad taste in my mouth about Wilson's feelings for House.

(But notably, Wilson gets that while he's looking for something that would embarrass House just as much as House embarrassed him, the real indepth revelation he could make to Chase and via Chase to the hospital, that House's biological father is a Unitarian minister and wrote a book of sermons that House has been studying - that's a level of hurt that is not commensurate with the teenage-Wilson in an embarrassing movie.)

Sorry but Wilson looked for somenthing to embarass House only after House has embarass him and yes he could make that revelation but he didn't ,when he found the book with chase he says to chase to talk about it to anyone it's chase that calls the author of che book not wilson, he talks about the book with House privately and when he find the author is the biological father of House ( from the photo on the book) he doesn't tell to anyone, he talks about it only with house,,so i don 't see how Wilson has hurt House, I would say the opposite, he respected the secret of House. and House has not apologized to Wilson.But well Wilson' feelings are always less important than house's....poor little defenseless House,,,,and bad and cruel wilson -_-Tara